shovel

the helicoil kits we use at work come with the drill bit, tap, helicoils. the only other things needed i think are a drill and an adjustable spanner to turn the tap. haven't done one myself but there been a fair few manipoo forks that have needed it done as the post mount brake mount is very easily stripped, usually only takes 10 mins max

great vid, really liked it, the riding was awesome and the music went very well with it too!

i'm thinking of getting a new front wheel soon, the lightest ones i've seen are king classic at 113g, but the lightest i've seen is made by "tune" and only weighs 75g! the tune one has spinning flanges so once the wheels built it balances out to remove any uneven spots of tension too, how cool! both are pretty expensive though, £115 ish for the king and £100 for the tune. . . . . (both non-disc by the way)

leaves you wanting more. . . . . . another great vid ben as you keep getting better and better, will have to get out riding with you again soon. just hope i don't push you too far next time

sorry to bring up this thread again but darren if you give me a shout i've got some proper chris king ring drive lube which should be used in hubs so i could take the hub apart and service it for you, my hub feels soo much better after using it, tried finish line lube before and it's just not as smooth

why would you want a green stem! don't mean to offend you or anything but a black one would look soo much better against your headset and you'll prob just regret getting a green one

magura royal blood, great feel from the lever, don't have to worry about in freezing/the seals messing up and it won't affect the 5 year leak proof garuntee from magura

did the level 2 cytec course through the bike shop i work at, finished it october last year. should be going on to do the level 3 course soonish

budweiser

can't remember which company it was but there is someone that makes hydrolic v-brakes, they look pretty funky although why would you want anything different from a hs33 magura. . . .

could be that the rotor isn't great as my friend ran these brakes over in morzene on his santa cruz vp-free for the whole summer and had no probs at all but with using old hayes disc rotors, in fact he was very impressed with them compared to mono m4 brakes and a whole assortment of expensive disc brakes he's used in the past they could also need bled, avid juicy bleeding kits use two syringes and take a long time to bleed as there has to be strictly no air in the brakes at all or they wont work well failing that you could try some decent pads like ebc reds or greens hope that helps

the wheel was probably just built very poorly with uneven/loose spoke tension and thats why it's folded that badly, no wheel should really buckle that bad off of a 2ft drop unless you land very hard and sideways

anyone from aberdeen/stonehaven, how long did it take you guys to drive up there last time

go to www.coustellier.co.uk and then send them an e-mail, sure they'll be able to help you out

sram pc-990 chain, top of the range sram (apart from the hollow pin and stamped ones which are a little weaker just lighter and more expensive really) should last you pretty well i use the 8 speed equivalent, pc-68, for trials and never had any problems with it, snapped a couple of them before but just with me being stupid and not replacing it after it had stretched out

they both use very different shapes of lever bodies and blades. when you pull the 04 lever it pushes the fluid horizontally directly into the system, but when you pull the 05 lever it pushes the fluid up the way towards you, and then the fluid comes out the lever from the opposite direction? no real difference in performance, but the 05 levers are nice and comfy, the lever blade is more shaped to your finger so less likely to give blisters, could just be that i have a set of 99' maguras that have really square shaped lever blades, i like them though

would rather just pay the extra for the proper profile stuff

my mate used to have a set, had to run them at high psi to stop punctures, didn't really last too long theres no substitute for a maxxis on the rear

not a fan of these sort of things myself, would much rather just run a star nut in my forks i used to run a conix, which is a very similar idea to the head doctor in my old fatty-r forks which came with old fsa headsets, after years of using this i took it off to find that the steerer tube looked very stressed at the top near where this had been. . . . . . . .also if these types of things were any good then why does fsa now provide a star nut with their headsets these days, yes they maybe cost less but there must be more to it than that

if the pistons were sticking, take the pads off, pull the lever back to the bar and secure it there with an elastic band now that the pistons are sticking out, give them a good clean up with a rag as you'll probably find they're covered in crap, once clean drop some wet xc lube on the pistons and then remove the elastic band and pump the lever to work the lube in wipe off any excess lube, pads back in and you should be fine, happened to me a while ago, usually because you're running the brake with too much tpa on, try setting up the pads closer to the rim so you don't need to use much tpa and this shouldn't happen

toight, toight like a toiger

another great vid with some unbelievable riding also didn't have to listen to this vid with the volume way down. . . .

cnc stuff is cut from a block which makes it nice and strong, also stiff eyelets are clips of metal that reinforce the spoke holes on rims, allowing you to to have tighter laced wheels without the danger of spokes pulling through, used more in downhill rims like the mavic ex729 which has "double eyelets" which are small sleeves that join the two walls of the rims making it uber strong

damn right ben, thomson stems are very good, i have an elite in 100mm and 5 degree rise with some easton ea70 bars, the stem feels so stiff and you can really see the build quality in them, its awesome. well worth the extra cash over any other stem. very light, incredibly stiff, tad expensive. . . .but you can really see and feel the difference over a normal stem

i bought a shimano HG-70 cassette in 21:12 then took it apart by unscrewing the three pins at the back of it, the highest gear that i use is 19 tooth as i use 22:19 ratio most the time i then ditched 2 of the gears think it was 21 and 14 and then replaced the two gears with three old metal cassette spacers cassette works perfect and with first gear being spaced over a bit with the three spacers it gives you a great chain line i use a modified xt 8 speed shifter pod, basically i unscrewed the screen that shows what gear you're in and then covered the top part in black duck tape to keep crap out, by taking it off you save a little weight and it has more space to rotate up a little bit more out the way. the actual thumb shifter part for changing into lower gears is quite large so i took a file and filed back the plastic alot making the thumb shifter much smaller and smoother shaped so it's alot more out the way, i finished it off with some sandpaper so it looks very smooth ideal mech for this is a shimano 105 short cage, mine is also locked out so it doesn't bounce off the frame all the time, even though it's locked out all my gears work perfectly